Jeff Dooley named The Washington Post’s special sections editor

Announcement from Business Editor Lori Montgomery and Deputy Business Editor Zachary Goldfarb:

We are delighted to announce that Jeff Dooley will become special sections editor, leading an ambitious new initiative to develop creative, themed digital packages with broad appeal to readers.

From his home base on the Business Desk, Jeff will partner with staffs across the newsroom to conceive and produce special sections that tap our vast storytelling resources to address topics deeply relevant to readers’ lives, from personal finance and technology to wellness and the evolving landscape of our pandemic existence. In collaboration with Elite Truong, The Post’s director of strategic initiatives, Jeff will engage staff and freelance writers to produce entertaining and thought-provoking story collections built around themes that often fall between desks or beyond the mandates of the traditional news cycle.

Jeff comes to this role after a terrific five-year run in Sports, where he drove coverage of the NFL while bringing enormous creativity to a broad range of topics. He edited Roman Stubbs’s wrenching piece about Ahmaud Arbery’s high school football coach, as well as a series about high school athletics that won the Curley Award for coverage of youth sports — and earned Roman recognition as a finalist for the Livingston Award. He edited Kent Babb’s story about a coach’s mission to save his players from gun violence at a New Orleans high school. And he edited Nicki Jhabvala’s powerful piece about a soldier who bonded with Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith while the pair recovered from nearly identical leg injuries.

Jeff also edited a memorable climate-change series, written by Rick Maese, that introduced readers to big-wave surfers who benefit from warming oceans and a historic, 135-mile Dutch ice-skating race that may never be held again. Jeff oversaw an innovative visual project that illuminated the signature offensive schemes of all 32 NFL teams heading into the 2018 season.

Before joining The Post in 2017, Jeff was editor in chief of Pro Football Focus, overseeing the company’s editorial operations and co-hosting a weekly NFL radio show on SiriusXM. He began his career at ESPN.

Jeff earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and a master’s from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in the District with his wife, Dayana Sarkisova, who edits The Post’s Climate Solutions team, and their dog, Pushkin.

Please join us in congratulating Jeff as he takes on this exciting new role.